"If the American woman would withhold her patronage from these secret nostrums the greater part of the industry would go to pieces. I do not ask any woman to take my word for this. Let me give her a personal statement direct from one of these manufacturers himself—a 'doctor' to whom thousands of women are writing to-day, and whose medicines they are buying by the hundreds of thousands of bottles each year. I quote his own statement, word for word:

"'Men are "on" to the game; we don't care a damn about them. It is the women we are after. We have buncoed them now for a good many years, and so long as they remain as "easy" as they have been, and we can make them believe that they are sick, we're all right. Give us the women every time. We can make them feel more female troubles In a year than they would really have if they lived to be a hundred.' ".—From "Why 'Patent Medicines' are Dangerous," Edward Bok, Ladies' Home Journal, March, 1905.

"REPEATERS."

It is the "repeat" orders that make the profit. Referring to a certain patent medicine that had gone to the wall a nostrum agent said that It failed because "it wasn't a good repeater." When these men doubt whether a new medicine will be a success they say: "I'm afraid it wouldn't be a 'repeater.'"

"Cure rheumatism" said a veteran patent medicine man considering the exploitation of a new remedy; "good Heavens, man, you don't want a remedy that cures 'em. Where would you get your 'repeats'? You want to get up a medicine that's full of dope, so the more they take of it the more they'll want."—From "The Inside Story of a Sham," Ladies' Home Journal, January, 1906.

PATENT MEDICINES AND TESTIMONIALS.

In the January, 1906, issue of the Ladies' Home Journal Mark Sullivan contributes an article on the business of securing from well-known people testimonials indorsing and praising nostrums. Mr. Sullivan learned that three men, rivals in trade, make a business of securing these indorsements. They are known as "testimonlal-brokers."

A representative of a patent medicine who was anxious to exploit his preparation through the press approached one of these brokers and made arrangements for the delivery of one hundred signed testimonials from members of congress, governors and men high in the Army and Navy. The following is the memorandum of the agreement as drawn up by the broker:

"Confirming my talk with Mr. ———, I will undertake to obtain testimonials from senators at $75 each, and from congressmen at $40, on a prearranged contract.... A contract for not less than $5,000 would meet my requirements In the testimonial line.... I can put your matter in good shape shortly after congress meets if we come to an agreement.... We can't get Roosevelt, but we can get men and women of national reputation, and we can get their statements in convincing form and language..."

It was for this reason that years ago Mrs. Pinkham, at Lynn, Mass., determined to step in and help her sex. Having had considerable experience in treating female ills with her Vegetable Compound, she encouraged the women of America to write to her for advice in regard to their complaints, and being a woman, it was easy for help ailing sisters to pour into her ears every detail of their suffering.

No physician in the world has had such a training, or has such an amount of information at hand to assist in the treatment of all kinds of female ills.

This, therefore, is the reason why Mrs. Pinkham, in her laboratory at Lynn, Mass., Is able to do more for the ailing women, of America than the family physician.' Any woman, therefore, is responsible for her own suffering who will not take the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for advice.

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The way in which the testimonial is actually obtained is thus described by the broker:

"The knowing how to approach each individual is my stock-in-trade. Only a man of wide acquaintance of men and things could carry it out. Often I employ women. Women know how to get around public men. For example, I know that Senator A has a poverty-stricken cousin, who works as a seamstress. I go to her and offer her twenty-five dollars to get the senator's signature to a testimonial. But most of it I do through newspaper correspondents here in Washington. Take the senator from some southern state. That senator is very dependent on the Washington correspondent of the leading newspaper in his state. By the dispatches which that correspondent sends back the senator's career is made or marred. So I go to that correspondent. I offer him $50 to get the senator's testimonial. The senator may squirm, but he'll sign all right. Then there are a number of easy-going congressmen who needn't be seen at all. I can sign their names to anything, and they'll stand for it. And there are always a lot of poverty-stricken, broken-down Army veterans hanging around Washington. For a few dollars they'll go to their old Army officers on a basis of old acquaintance sake and get testimonials."

It goes without saying that such testimonials are a fraud on the purchaser of the medicine thus exploited.

"Not one in a thousand of these letters ever reaches the eyes of the 'doctor' to whom they are addressed. There wouldn't be hours enough in the day to read them even if he had the desire. On the contrary, these letters from women of a private and delicate nature are opened and read by young men and girls; they go through not fewer than eight different hands before they reach a reply; each in turn reads them, and if there is anything 'spicy' you will see the heads of two or three girls get together and enjoy (!) the 'spice.' Very often these 'spicy bits' are taken home and shown to the friends and families of these girls and men! Time and again have I seen this done; time and again have I been handed over a letter by one of the young fellows with the remark: 'Read this, isn't that rich?' only to read of the recital of some trouble into which a young girl has fallen, or some mother's sacred story of her daughter's all!

"Then, to cap the climax of iniquity, with some of these houses these names and addresses are sold at two, three or five cents a name to firms in other lines of business for the purpose of sending circulars. As a fact, often the trouble is not taken to copy off the names and addresses, but the letters themselves, with all their private contents, are sold!

"This is the true story of the 'sacredly confidential' way in which these private letters from women are treated!"—Statement of a man who spent two years in the employ of a large patent medicine concern, as told in "How the Private Confidences of Women Are Laughed At." Edward Bok, Ladies' Home Journal, November, 1904.